Digital Commons Network^™

Ctrl + Alt + Inner Speech: A Verbal–Cognitive Scaffold (Vcs) Model Of Pathways To Computational Thinking, Daisuke Akiba

Publications and Research

This theoretical paper introduces the Verbal–Cognitive Scaffold (VCS) Model, a cognitively inclusive framework which proposes the cognitive architectures underlying computational thinking (CT). Moving beyond monolithic theories of cognition (e.g., executive-function and metacognitive control models), the VCS Model posits inner speech (InSp) as the predominant cognitive pathway supporting CT operations in neurotypical populations. Synthesizing interdisciplinary scholarship across cognitive science, computational theory, neurodiversity research, and others, this framework articulates distinct mechanisms through which InSp supports CT. The model specifies four primary pathways linking InSp to CT components: verbal working memory supporting decomposition, symbolic representation facilitating pattern recognition and abstraction, sequential processing enabling …

A Protectorate Divided: The Otjimbingue Petition And Settler Contestations Of Railway Construction In German Southwest Africa, 1897–1902, Marta Millar

Publications and Research

Supporters of the State Railway in German Southwest Africa heralded its construction as ‘the dawn of a new era for the protectorate’ (Windhoeker Anzeiger, 27 October 1898). While railways did enable the expansion of colonial communities, not all settlers wrote as optimistically about this change as did the Anzeiger’s editor. Between 1897 and 1902, familial correspondence and debates in the protectorate’s first newspaper, the Windhoeker Anzeiger, reveal how various settlers negotiated the railroad’s transformative impact on colonial society and their everyday lives. Opposition voices argued that the railroad would harm the fragile colonial economy, serving only …

Fast & Forensic: Rapid Detection & Quantitation Of 30 + Emerging Novel Psychoactive Substances In Hair Using Lc-Ms/Ms, Seokjin Hwang

Student Theses

The continuous emergence of novel psychoactive substances (NPS) poses a significant challenge for forensic and clinical toxicologists, due to their structural diversity, rapid turnover on the illicit drug market, and limited toxicological information. Hair is a powerful matrix for retrospective drug exposure assessment and monitoring NPS worldwide. Not only does it provide a broad window of detection but also a simple sample exchange amongst laboratories. However, the extraction of multi-class NPS in a single method remains an analytical challenge. Therefore, there is an urgent need for extraction techniques and analytical methods that are both rapid and capable of multi-class quantitation …

A Detailed Investigation Into Word-Order In The Modification Of Pronouns, Kelli Hesseltine, Joseph C. M. Davis

Publications and Research

This study builds upon Hesseltine and Davis ([2020]. “The Communicative Function of Adjective-Noun Order in English.” WORD 66 (3): 166–193. https://doi.org/10.1080/00437956.2020.1793499), which examines word order in modification in English and proposes the Assertion of Characterization hypothesis. To communicate an assertion of an entity’s traits, speakers employ two different meanings: weaker, signaled by the order AB as in long (A) hair (B), and stronger, signaled by BA as in hair (B) long (A). The attribution of the characterization is thus made less or more assertively. This work focuses on examples where the characterized entity, the B, is a form traditionally …

Saussure’S Universal Distinctive Feature Dimensions, Thomas M. Eccardt

Publications and Research

This paper revisits Saussure’s scalar analysis of phonemes, offering a modern reinterpretation that replaces binary features with phonological dimensions grounded in measurement theory. By redefining Saussure’s [openness] and [backness] as ordered scales and Chomsky and Halle’s “combination and concatenation” as partially ordered scales, the paper introduces a notion of “[phono]logical simultaneity.” This framework renders the variously-defined phoneme and segment redundant, and shifts the focus of distinctiveness to the linguistic sign, the morpheme. It demonstrates how phonological dimensions link continuous articulations and acoustic signals (e.g., F1 and F2) with discrete linguistic signs through calibrated distinctive features. The analysis identifies Saussure’s two …

Lessons From Tiktok: Using Popular Social Media Platforms To Engage Gen Z, Debra Bernstein

Urban Library Journal

This study looks at how academic libraries in the New York City metropolitan area are using TikTok to engage with their communities, particularly students. It analyzes the most popular videos from five active library accounts, categorizing content types and measuring engagement through TikTok’s built-in metrics. Results indicate that humorous and lighthearted content consistently receives the highest engagement, while instructional or “how-to” videos tend to underperform. These findings suggest that while TikTok may not be the most effective platform for instructional outreach, it holds potential as a tool for visibility, community engagement, and humanizing the library’s presence. As students increasingly turn …

Ethical And Legal Concepts For Pt, Clarence Chan

Open Educational Resources

This course introduces the topics of medical ethics and legal issues as applied to physical therapy practice. Students will have the opportunity to apply legal and ethical theories and concepts to analyze and discuss issues faced by healthcare practitioners. Ethical and legal standards set forth by the legal system in the United States, the Standard of Practice of New York State, and the American Physical Therapy Association core ethics documents will be explored. Students will also become familiarized with the various aspects of administrative, financial, quality improvement, and personnel management information as related to health care practice in the United …

Untargeted Metabolomics Reveals Organ-Specific And Extraction-Dependent Metabolite Profiles In Endemic Tajik Species Ferula Violacea Korovin, Sylhiya Mavlonazarova, Kenneth Acosta, Rinat Abzalimov, Saidbeg Satorov, Vyacheslav Dushenkov

Publications and Research

Ferula violacea Korovin, an endemic Tajikistani plant with purported medicinal properties, remains understudied. This study employs untargeted metabolomics to characterize the metabolite profiles of ethanol extracts and juices from F. violacea roots and seeds. In total, 540 distinct metabolites are putatively identified, 419 of which are previously unreported in the Ferula genus, representing a substantial expansion of its known chemical diversity. The most abundant metabolites are terpenoids, amino acid derivatives, and alkaloids. A particularly abundant group of daucane sesquiterpenoids, sharing a common (6-methyl-azulen-4-yl) cyclohexanecarboxylate substructure, is identified, including known metabolites such as ferutidin and ferutinin. Comparative analysis reveals organ-specific metabolic …

Finding Solutions: Meeting Essential Needs To Overcome Health And Educational Inequities Among College Students, Nicholas Freudenberg, Rashida Crutchfield

Publications and Research

Many economic, academic, and social factors influence college completion, and scholars have documented that a significant cause of students leaving school before graduation is that many do not have their basic needs for food, housing, and health care met. These barriers undermine their academic success by forcing students to reduce the time spent on their studies, work more hours, or stop out of school to support themselves or their families. Unmet essential needs jeopardize academic and life success for students in higher education across the United States and widen racial/ethnic and class inequities in college completion and health. Our review …

Clacls Reportage, Vol. 2, Tatiana Bertolucci Peixoto, Marcela Joya, Oscar Aponte, Ana María Granados Romero

Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino Studies

This second volume of the CLACLS Reportage Series is a testament to our ongoing commitment to public-facing scholarship that bridges academic research and the lived experiences of Latinx communities in New York and beyond. This edition brings together three distinct yet interconnected stories that speak to belonging, migration, and cultural transformation across generations.

Tatiana Bertolucci Peixoto follows the legacy of Marielle Franco, the Black, queer, favela-born activist whose political assassination in Rio de Janeiro reverberated around the world galvanizing a global network of resistance—from Brazil’s favelas to New York’s diasporic communities—turning her name into a living emblem of feminist, anti-racist, …

How United States Policy Is Hurting Puerto Rico’S Students, Chris Soto

CUNY Centro, The Center for Puerto Rican Studies

Discussions about the challenges facing Puerto Rico’s education system often ignore the profound and lasting impact of United States policies that have systematically discriminated against the territory’s students. Today’s education system reflects a layered trauma—one rooted in colonial marginalization and reinforced by a post-1965 federal education framework that has consistently failed to adequately serve Puerto Rico’s youth.

This report highlights the impact of U.S. policy on Puerto Rico’s students compared to those in the 50 states and District of Columbia. Focusing on resource inequities, the exclusion from federal programs, and the limited influence on education policymakers in Washington D.C., Puerto …

Mobility, Dispersion And Economic Diversity In Housing Conditions For Hispanics In New York State, Carlos Vargas-Ramos, Veronica Diaz, Jorge Soldevilla-Irizarry

CUNY Centro, The Center for Puerto Rican Studies

This report presents housing data in legislative districts in the state of New York and compare them to state-level data to highlight how Hispanic in legislative districts throughout the state fare relative to the district’s overall population as well as the state’s population as a whole.

Findings include Hispanics generally, but not always, having worse outcomes around housing conditions related to costs than other New Yorkers, evident in the data presented at the district level, the county level and the state level. But Latinos are also an increasingly diverse group, not just culturally (e.g., in terms of generational acculturation in …

Enabling Coercive Drivers With Green Supply Chain Management Practices To Gain Performance Nexus Through External Collaboration And Monitoring, Aamir Rashid, Rizwana Rasheed

Publications and Research

Businesses primarily provide products or services, expand operations, and generate profits. However, they frequently disregard the environmental and economic consequences of their actions as they strive for profitability and growth. Consequently, the main objective of this research was to examine the impact of a multifaceted supply chain function on performance. Data were collected from 415 respondents employed in various manufacturing companies within a developing economy. The hypotheses were evaluated using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) through Smart PLS. The findings discovered that ten of the thirteen hypotheses tested were supported, while three were not. Coercive drivers were observed to significantly influence …

Urban Renewal And The Displacement Of Puerto Ricans In Lincoln Square, Jorge Soldevilla-Irizarry, Laura Colón Meléndez, Cristel Jusino Díaz, Damayra Figueroa-Lazu

CUNY Centro, The Center for Puerto Rican Studies

This report focuses an overlooked Puerto Rican community in Manhattan’s Upper West Side, called Lincoln Square, during the 1950s, where more than 3,000 Puerto Ricans had lived prior to the Lincoln Center urban renewal project. As part of the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts  “Legacies of San Juan Hill”  initiative, the Lincoln Center archives offered CENTRO’s Data Hub access to 2,130 digitized site occupation records pertaining to 165 distinct addresses of tenants residing within the site of what would become the city’s premier performance center. These records invite a necessary retrospective reassessment and reframing of the scripts that bolstered …

Engagement By Design: Belongingness, Cultural Value Orientations, And Pathways Into Emerging Technologies, Daisuke Akiba, Michael Perrone, Caterina Almendral, Rebecca Garte

Publications and Research

This theoretical article examines how belongingness, defined as the sense that one’s participation is legitimate and valued, interacts with cultural value orientations to help explain persistent disparities in U.S. technology engagement, including emerging technologies, across racial and ethnic groups. While structural barriers (e.g., racism, poverty, linguistic bias, etc.) remain essential to understanding such inequity, we argue that engagement patterns in technology also reflect how different cultural communities may define and experience belongingness in relation to digital domains. Drawing on Triandis and Gelfand’s framework, and focusing specifically on educational contexts, we propose the Belongingness through Cultural Value Alignment (BCVA) model, whereby …

Beyond “A Purely Passive Servitude”:Antonio Oblitas, Casta, And Afro-Descendants In The Rebellion Of TúPac Amaru Ii, Tacuma Peters

Publications and Research

This article examines the contributions of Afro-descendants to the Túpac Amaru II rebellion in Peru. It argues that although historians have recognized the importance of race and casta in the rebellion, they have been insufficiently attentive to the complex roles that those of African descent have played. It argues that the most famous Afro-descendant, Antonio Oblitas, has often been ignored, misidentified, and minimized in his aesthetic and visual contributions to the uprising. This problematic historical approach extends to other free and enslaved men because scholars place them within the paradigm of passive (and enslaved) servitude. Furthermore, the article contends that …

Zero Textbook Low Cost Syllabus For English 2100 (Writing 1), Anne Grevenitis

Open Educational Resources

In English 2100, our focus will be on autoethnography as a genre of writing. To write an autoethnography is to examine the value of the personal and use traditional modes of research to flesh out the narrative of the self. Through diverse research methods (interviews and site observation) and a multiple-step writing process (journaling, drafting and peer reviewing), your autoethnography should make a substantive contribution, have aesthetic merit, have reflexivity, make an impact, and express a reality.

Feminist Scholarly Editing: A Provocation, Marlowe Daly-Galeano, Melissa J. Homestead, Claudia Stokes, Leila Walker

Publications and Research

This essay examines the feminist challenges posed by the protocols and history of scholarly editing. Prompted by the recent revival of bibliographical studies, the essay seeks to instigate a similar reconsideration of scholarly editing, bibliography’s counterpart in textual criticism. Scholarly editing has a vexed history with regard to women and gender: women writers were seldom the beneficiaries of editorial attention, but editors regularly used gendered metaphors to describe their work and often relied on the unacknowledged labor of women. This essay examines the history of sexism within the field of scholarly editing, illustrates the challenges and promises of editing women’s …

Zero Textbook Cost Syllabus For Env 3070 (Agroecology), Benjamin Iuliano

Open Educational Resources

Our relationships with the food we eat are deeply personal, but also connect us to a wide array of people, plants, animals, and landscapes around the world. Encompassing a diversity of scholarly approaches, the field of agroecology seeks to understand the interactions among these components, draw attention to the consequences of our present industrial food system, and create the conditions for more sustainable and just futures. In this course, students will learn about the science, practice, and social movement of agroecology through lectures, course discussions, field trips, and hands-on activities.

Zero Textbook Cost Syllabus For Pol1101 (American Government: Practices And Values), Michael A. Villanova

Open Educational Resources

In this course, we will analyze the ideas, history, and values of American politics and government. This course is divided into three parts. First, we will examine the foundations of American politics by looking at America’s founding documents, early American political thought, and the history of civil liberties and civil rights. Second, we will read about political behavior and discuss what motivates political participation in America. Third, we will look at American political institutions in the three branches of government: legislative, executive, and judiciary. This class will provide students with an introductory understanding of key concepts, theories, debates, and ideas …

Freshman Comp Ii Eng 24xx, Joao M. Da Silva

Open Educational Resources

This course uses a memoir to elicit themes related to addiction, family and interpersonal relationships. Additionally, it invites students to develop their own voices as they engage with academic discourse in the disciplines of psychology and addiction studies.

Education First Year Seminar, Edf101 Fall 2025: Syllabus, Givanni Ildefonso-Sánchez

Open Educational Resources

The Education First Year Seminar (EDF 101) is required of all new students majoring in Education. Its goals are to introduce students to the liberal arts, campus culture, and the education field. The course also aims to develop a better understanding of the learning process and acquire essential academic skills. Taught by ELA faculty and supported by Peers Advisors and co-curricular professionals, this course addresses issues related to contemporary college life and to the field of education (birth through 12th Grade).

Entering college marks the beginning of a journey towards greater knowledge, the discovery of a new identity as a …

Medst101 Contemporary Media, Fall 2025 Syllabus, Juan Monroy

Open Educational Resources

A survey of contemporary media industries including their technical, economic, social, political and cultural implications. We will also examine the economic underpinnings of media, the role of advertising and public relations, and the policies that govern contemporary media industries.

From Seapower To Shining Seapower, Michael Lee

Publications and Research

The liberal world order is dead: the United States has abandoned both the domestic and international institutional commitments that enabled it to function. How can liberal democracy survive in an increasingly hostile world? How can liberal democracies grow powerful enough to defend themselves without becoming the empires they fear? I argue that seapowers have historically represented a distinct kind of hegemon, that is more amenable to international cooperation, and democracy at home. Moreover, the transition from declining seapowers to rising ones has played a vital role in preserving a space for more liberal states (relative to their historical context), such …

Validation And Trend Analysis Of Satellite-Derived Surface Water Temperature Observations Over Adirondack Lakes, Marzi Azarderakhsh, Carolien Mossel, Abdou Rachid Bah, Aisha Malik, Fahmeda Khanom, Jonathan Borrelli, Pete Mcintyre, Hamidreza Norouzi, Kevin Rose

Publications and Research

This study aims to validate and evaluate satellite remote sensing observations from the Landsat series over 135 lakes in the Adirondack State Park, located in upstate New York, and to examine their surface temperature trends over the past 40 years. It utilizes data from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS), along with Landsat 5 and 7. Park-scale results were derived by extracting MODIS surface temperatures within the park boundary, while lake-scale results were estimated using Landsat 5 (1984-2012) and Landsat 7 (1999-2023) observations. In addition, field observations were utilized to perform a comprehensive validation and evaluation of satellite-based surface temperature …

In The Name Of Awareness: Audience, Venue, And The Politics Of Witnessing Human Rights Violations, Barberán Reinares, Eunah Lee

Publications and Research

Human rights scholar Wendy Kozol has posed a series of challenging questions regarding women’s human rights: “How are experiences of suffering represented? By whom? In what venues? And for which audiences?” This article seeks to address Kozol’s inquiry regarding representations of sexual violence and context by considering the Comfort Women Wanted installation at the Museum of Sex in New York City. The curators of this exhibit, partly sponsored by the Sex Workers Project, seem to have framed this art display within the conflicting feminist debates on sexual slavery and sex work, thus conflating “comfort women” survivors with sex workers within …

A Few Millimeters Of Bone: How Male Supremacists Leverage Scientific Sexism To Reinforce Misogynistic Ideologies, Robin O'Hanlon

Publications and Research

In recent years, male supremacist actors have reinforced their misogynistic worldviews by using narrative strategies centered on authoritative “common sense” and scientific “fact.” This paper presents a thematic narrative analysis of The Incel Wiki and the Wiki4Men, representing the first formal analysis of the wiki for the men’s rights organization A Voice for Men. The analysis indicates male supremacists use techniques including misappropriation of scientific information, manipulation of statistics, and leveraging pseudoscientific information to develop their narrative strategies of supremacy. The most consistent narrative strategies of scientific sexism on the wikis are male victimhood, denial of inequality between men and …

Disaster Resilience And Normalization: Facing Facts, Naomi Zack Phd

Publications and Research

Disaster resilience requires acknowledgment and preparation to be normalized or integrated into normal life. But denial without preparation normalizes disaster by  leaving it out of normal life. In Disaster Resilience and Normalization: Facing Facts, Naomi Zack explores the normative and factual dimensions of a Climate Change Paradigm, through a global scope. Apart from the normative issues of who is responsible and who should pay for mitigation, the facts of Rising Average Earth Temperatures and more Intense and Frequent Disasters must still be faced.

But facing those facts has always been voluntary for powerful signatories to the 2015 Paris Climate …

Introduction To Sociology: Groups And Organizations, Marcia Morrison Ph.D.

Open Educational Resources

Abstract:

This comprehensive analysis explores the dynamics of social groups and bureaucratic organizations, drawing on foundational theories and empirical studies to illuminate how structure, identity, and informal culture shape collective behavior. The paper examines the essential elements of group dynamics—regular interaction, defined roles, shared norms, and collective identity—alongside the four stages of group decision-making that guide consensus and effectiveness. It distinguishes between primary and secondary groups, emphasizing their respective influences on personal identity and social cohesion, and discusses the pivotal role of reference groups in identity formation.

Further, the discussion extends to the mechanisms of group survival, analyzing concepts such …

Introduction To Us Government & Politics Syllabus, Jennifer Corby

Open Educational Resources

This syllabus outlines the structure and pedagogical design of POL 51: Introduction to U.S. Government and Politics, taught at Kingsborough Community College (CUNY). Developed as part of an Open Educational Resources (OER) course redesign funded through the CUNY OER Initiative, the course integrates accessible, cost-free materials from Attenuated Democracy: A Critical Introduction to U.S. Government and Politics alongside multimodal, student-centered learning activities. The course emphasizes Universal Design for Learning (UDL), ungrading, and reflective journaling to foster civic engagement and metacognitive awareness. A central innovation of this version is a two-week Critical AI Literacy (CALI) module that situates artificial intelligence …